Enter Dewdrop (DanceTabs)

The Nutcracker season has officially begun. At New York City Ballet, the ballet opened its month-long run on Nov. 23. Here is my review of that performance, with Tiler Peck as an exciting Dewdrop, carried by the music.

And here is a short excerpt:
“hen something is beautifully made it never gets old. So it is with Balanchine’s Nutcracker, first performed by New York City Ballet in 1954 and honed to near-perfection over the years. There are good performances, bad ones, and every so often a magical one, but even a middling one will do, because the structure is sound. First, there is Tchaikovsky’s score: imaginative, filled with whimsy, but also, without warning, steeped in drama. Balanchine’s interpolation of the yearning violin cadenza from The Sleeping Beauty into the scene in which Marie falls asleep with the Nutcracker in her arms is so seamless, and feels so appropriate, that one would never guess the music had been smuggled in from another ballet.”